Apparently it is SOP, several freepers have said their postman does it, UPS, repair men etc.
I agree it’s not something I would have thought of because it’s subtle. Offer treat, dog owner reflexively puts the dog on a lead, situation solved. In some of the birdwatcher society articles I read they referenced dogs off leash tearing up the ground shrubbery being a recurring problem and this as a common solution.
For my part I cannot conceive of the solecism of disturbing people who were birding in a posted special birding site with my running dog and then upon being asked to leash my dog or leave telling the birder to go to hell. I would be so ashamed to have broken the rules & disturbed them. I would have apologized & walked a different direction. That is what I think the birder had a right to expect.
Some horse people have a similar egocentric world view. When we first built our house I was gardening one day and a woman on a horse came up from the back of the property rapidly. I had 3 young children at the time & they could easily have been bowled over as she came over the rise. I was speechless when she said “we always ride here. Many people put up signs to show which path they want us to take, horses yes, horses no.”
I can’t even remember what I said but we had 8ft deer fence around an acre which included the house so fast your head would have spun. The rest of our plot is left for the animals, if she rode there I don’t know.
The whole LOT of them!!